Tennis: Michael Venus suffers shock first round French Open defeat

Michael Venus of New Zealand plays a backhand. Photo /Getty

2017 French Open champion doubles Michael Venus and his South African partner Raven Klaasen have suffered a surprise first round exit from Roland Garros.

In blustery conditions, the sixth seeds have been bundled out 6-3, 7-6 (4) in one hour and 18 minutes by India's Rohan Bopanna and his Romanian partner Marius Copil.

Games went with serve in the first set before Klaasen was broken at 3-4 and Copil closed out the opening set.

Klaasen and Venus had a number of chances to break serve in the second set but couldn't convert and it went to a tie break with Bopanna and Copil getting an early mini-break which they never relinquished.

Marcus Daniell is the last Kiwi standing after he and his Dutch partner were impressive in beating Slovenia's Aljaz Bedene and Poland's Hubert Hurkacz 6-3, 6-2 in just over an hour.

"It took us a while to get used to the style of their play, serving and staying back. But once we got used to it we got into the net and took time away from them. In the end we ran away from it a little bit," Daniell said.

"They now have the unenviable task of trying to knock over the top seeds Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo," Daniell added.

"You have got to beat the top teams to win slams."

Clay is not their favourite surface and we have just as good as shot as anyone.

Meanwhile Artem Sitak and his American partner Austin Krajicek, seeded 16th were ousted in the first round 6-3, 6-4 by Taipei's Cheng-Peng Hsieh and Indonesia's Christopher Rungkat.

Games went with serve until 2-3 in the first set when Sitak was broken. At 4-4 in the 2nd set Krajicek was broken with Hsieh stepping up on the return of serve and the unseeded pair closed out the match.

"It's definitely very disappointing and they were playing really well today and swinging every shot and they were going in," Sitak said.

Matt Brown is in Paris thanks to Emirates Airline